


Sweet As Pie

by thearrowsoflegolas



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: And Steve just stayed with him, And it killed me, But Bucky didn't get captured, Civil War (Marvel), Domestic Avengers, Domestic Fluff, Domestic nonsense, Everything is the Same, Fluff, Friendship, Inside And Out, No Slash, Pies, Steve helps, and i just want bucky to be HAPPY goddamnit, becasue i watched civil war, being happy, bucky bakes a pie, bucky is a plum loving fuck, incidentally with steve, okay, small spoilers for civil war, so here he is, so this all began
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-06 05:33:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6740515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thearrowsoflegolas/pseuds/thearrowsoflegolas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He could smell burning by the time he stood outside his door.<br/>His heart stopped.<br/>Almost without thinking, he slammed the door open with his shoulder, ignoring the burst of pain that it sent ringing through his arm. Was something on fire? Was Steve alright? Had what remained of HYDRA finally found him?<br/>He whipped his head around, looking for the source of the fire, the acrid smell of smoke in his nostrils.<br/>“Bucky.” A low voice came from his left, and he whipped his head around to see Steve, wearing a frilly pink apron with ‘Kiss The Cook’ emblazoned on the front of it. One of his hands was raised, palm facing upwards.<br/>The other was clutching a large frying pan that was pluming out unnecessarily large amounts of black smoke.<br/>Well, that explained the smell. </p><p> </p><p>In which Bucky bakes a pie, Steve tries (and fails) to help, and I pretend that none of Civil War happened, because James Barnes deserves to be HAPPY goddamnit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweet As Pie

Bucky held up the plum in his hand, weighing it methodically. He gave the fruit a small squeeze, smiling to himself as the flesh bounced back almost immediately. It was ripe, just the correct ripeness for a pie. He adjusted the brim on his blue cap, before gently placing six of the plums in a brown paper bag, making sure not to bruise them. He handed the small Pilipino woman behind the stall a handful of coins, and she counted out his change and handed it back to him. 

“Danke,” he smiled and nodded his head in thanks. 

“Du bist Wilkommen,”

Bucky turned on his heel and walked back the way he had come, his hand tightly grasping the brown paper bag. It had been almost two weeks since Steve had gate-crashed his small apartment. Almost two weeks of Steve sleeping on his floor, refusing to leave until Bucky was completely ready. He smiled to himself as he walked. 

His memories had been coming back, bit by bit. He struggled with some details, of course, but with the help of his notebooks he felt more himself than he had in years. He could even bring his mind back to before the war, when Steve and he were kids, mucking around on the streets of Brooklyn. 

The world had changed a lot since then. 

Bucky reached his block of flats in a short amount of time, and managed to walk up the stairs relatively quickly. 

He could smell burning by the time he stood outside his door. 

His heart stopped. 

Almost without thinking, he slammed the door open with his shoulder, ignoring the burst of pain that it sent ringing through his arm. Was something on fire? Was Steve alright? Had what remained of HYDRA finally found him?

He whipped his head around, looking for the source of the fire, the acrid smell of smoke in his nostrils. 

“Bucky.” A low voice came from his left, and he whipped his head around to see Steve, wearing a frilly pink apron with ‘Kiss The Cook’ emblazoned on the front of it. One of his hands was raised, palm facing upwards. 

The other was clutching a large frying pan that was pluming out unnecessarily large amounts of black smoke. 

Well, that explained the smell. 

Bucky rolled his eyes, his heartrate returning to normal, but Steve still looked worried. He placed the pan down on the counter and took a step towards Bucky, slowly, as if approaching a wounded animal. 

“Sorry, Buck.” He said, glancing at the door, which was hanging slightly askew from its hinges after Bucky had used his body as a battering ram in order to enter the flat, “I should have thought.”

Bucky shook his head, waving Steve’s apology away. He was far less fragile than the blonde man would like to believe, even though his head was still ringing from the panic that he had faced only moments before. He was embarrassed to say that this wasn’t the first time this had happened. Wasn’t the first time he had freaked out over something and overreacted. 

It certainly wouldn’t be the last. 

He felt a warm hand on his shoulder, and looked up to see Steve, a small smile on his face.

“You okay?”

Bucky nodded, yeah, he was okay. 

“It’s not my fault you’re such a shitty cook.”

Steve let out a guffaw of laughter at that, and rolled his eyes, turning his back to Bucky and walking back to the kitchen, picking up the ruined frying pan on his way there. The brunette took the red cap off his head and placed it on the small table in the centre of the room, there was no need for him to hide his face around Steve, and followed the taller man into the tiny kitchen. It was a mess. Steve had somehow, in the ten minutes in which Bucky had been out, managed to completely cover every available surface in a thin layer of flour. Bucky stopped still, his mouth wide, and Steve snorted out a laugh. 

“I was trying to make the pastry.”

Bucky raised an incredulous eyebrow. 

“In a pan?”

Steve walked over to the recipe book and practically shoved it in Bucky’s face, opening it on the page for plum pie. 

“It says ‘soften the butter’!” He jabbed at it with a finger, “Right here.”

Bucky laughed. Actually laughed. It had been so long since he had that he almost froze in shock for a second. Having Steve around was like constantly being surrounded by warmth. His best friend was slowly melting the block of ice that had been frozen inside him for so long. 

“You soften the butter in the microwave, you punk.” Bucky chuckled, taking the recipe book from Steve’s hands and going to swat him on the head with it. The Super-Soldier ducked just in time, and shrugged his shoulders. 

“It should have said that in the book, jerk.” Steve replied, using their old nicknames for eachother.

“They’re expecting you to use your common sense, Steve… I guess it was their mistake.”

Bucky placed the brown paper bag on the counter and pulled out the plums, taking out a small knife from one of the drawers and chopping each of them in half, removing the stones. 

“What does it say to do?” Bucky asked, not even turning around. 

“Sugar and plums in the pan, bring to the boil.” Steve read out from the book, nodding to himself. Seemed easy enough. Although, knowing him, he would somehow fuck this up. Steve was anything but a domestic goddess. He weighed out the 400g of sugar and poured it into a steel pan, switching the gas light on underneath it. Bucky turned around, plum halves in his hands, and threw them into the pan, wiping the residue on his jeans. He took a wooden spoon from the counter and passed it to Steve, looking him hard in the eyes. 

“Don’t stop stirring.”

Steve rolled his eyes. 

“You know, I figured that I’d be the one in charge after they bulked me up.”

Bucky let out a snort of laughter at that, and opened the fridge door, pulling out some unsalted butter. 

“You figured wrong, Rogers.” He laughed, as he weighed out the correct amount and placed it in a porcelain dish. The dish then went in the microwave. 

“See this, Steve?” Bucky jibed, and the taller man turned around, still stirring the pan. He rolled his eyes when he saw what Bucky was doing. 

“In the microwave.”

Steve snorted and turned back, continuing to stir. 

“In my defence, I didn’t know what a microwave was until two years ago.”

“Ignorantia juris non excusat.”

Steve let out a melodramatic sigh. 

“You know I don’t speak Russian, Buck.”

The sugar was beginning to melt, and Steve continued to stir as the deep reddish purple of the plums begun to bleed into the syrup. 

“That’s Latin, you uncultured swine.” Bucky muttered as he pulled the bowl out of the microwave with his metal hand, not needing a pair of oven gloves. HYDRA probably hadn’t had cooking utensils on their mind when they had implanted him with the arm, but it certainly helped nonetheless, “It means ‘ignorance is no defence.”

He kneaded the softened butter in with the flour, salt and sugar, feeling the dough form between his hands. It was relaxing, getting to do this. It calmed him down. Even before Steve had found him here Bucky had used to make bread every other day. It felt good to finally be creating something rather than destroying it. 

“What makes you such a culinary genius in the first place?” Asked Steve, a laugh in his voice despite the accusatory tone. He took the pan off the heat, but continued to stir, the plum-sugar mixture fully combined. 

Bucky smiled. This was a question he actually knew the answer to. 

“Remember Mary?”

Steve rolled his eyes. Of course, with Buck, it would be a girl. He grabbed the handle of the pan and turned around, facing Bucky, still stirring the jam. 

“Remind me.”

Steve didn’t fail to notice the corner of Bucky’s mouth lift up into a smirk. It was unusual for him to remember something where Steve didn’t. He was enjoying the feeling. 

“Blonde hair. Her father was a preacher.”

Steve raised an eyebrow in recollection. 

“Hail Mary?”

Bucky let out a snort of laugher and picked up a rolling pin, sprinkling a bit of flour on it before rolling the dough out into a flat circle. 

“Hail Mary, yeah.” He chuckled to himself at the nickname, “Well she told me that her mother said she could never love a man if he didn’t know how to bake, so that Summer I bought every cookbook I could get my hands on, and I taught myself how to cook.”

Steve raised an eyebrow, That was something that he hadn’t known. 

“What happened?”

Bucky rolled his eyes and let out a low snort. 

“She came back from Summer vacation, and started going out with Joe Langley, because his parents had bought him a car.”

Steve smiled at that. He remembered Joe Langley, a tall stocky boy who had always picked on him at school. Steve had always been skinny, shorter than the other boys. He hadn’t understood why Bucky had ever wanted to be friends with him, but he was grateful every day that he did. Not only would Bucky willingly beat up any boy who called Steve a ‘scrap’ or ‘scrawny’, but he had also been there when Steve’s mom had died. The worst day of his life. 

Bucky had gone to the funeral, and he had given Steve a place in his own home. He owed everything to that guy. The guy who was now swearing under his breath as he tried to lift the flat pastry dough up and bring it to the pie tin in one piece. He somehow managed it, and flattened the sides down, cutting off the edges. He took a step back and looked at his masterpiece with his hands on his hips. 

Steve took the pan and raised an eyebrow at Bucky. 

“Does this go in yet?”

The brunette nodded, and grabbed the spare pieces of pastry, rolling them out again and cutting them up into small rectangles. When Steve had transferred the plum jam to the inside of the pastry dish, Bucky manoeuvred himself in beside him and placed the rectangles on the top of the pie in a criss-cross fashion. 

He had to admit to himself, it looked pretty good. 

“We are geniuses.” Bucky said at last, after grabbing the pie tin with his metal arm and putting it directly in the oven. No oven-gloves needed. 

Steve nodded at Bucky, and smiled. 

“We are.”

The two of them retreated back into the main room, the smell of plums filling the whole flat. It wasn’t a large place, Bucky realised, it seemed even smaller with just the two of them, but it fit him just fine. When Steve had first arrived at his flat, with a warning that he may be in danger, Bucky had recognised him, yes, but only as Captain America. It had taken a while for him to recognise him as Steven Rogers. Even longer to recognise him as his Steve, his friend, but once he had, there was no going back. Deep down, Steve was still the same skinny guy from Brooklyn who didn’t know how to run away from a fight. He still shared the same reasonless optimism that the world was as good a place as they could get, and that people were trustworthy until they proved themselves not to be. It was a far cry from what Bucky usually felt, as if the whole World was lining up in a firing squad, ready to take a shot. 

He needed someone like Steve in his life right now. 

When the alarm finally went off to signify the completion of the pie, Steve nearly jumped out of his seat in excitement. The smell of Plum Pie had been filling the small flat for the last half hour, and it was making his mouth water. Bucky was decidedly more calm, walking over to the oven and picking the pie tin out with his metal arm, placing it on the centre of the dingy table. Steve nodded in anticipation. 

“Oh my God, that smells divine.”

Bucky looked up at him, a glint in his eyes. 

“Do you wanna let it cool, or cut it up now and risk literally burning our tongues out?”

Him and Steve were silent for a second, before both saying at exactly the same time and in exactly the same voice, 

“Now.”

Bucky chuckled, and Steve pulled up a chair and sat down, looking at the pie with something akin to reverence. Bucky reached the cutlery drawer and turned back to Steve. 

“Cut it up with a knife like civilised human beings or absolutely destroy it with forks like a pair of savages?”

Steve raised an eyebrow. 

“Do you even have to ask?”

Bucky smiled and turned back around, fiddling in the drawer, before walking back to Steve, a shit-eating grin on his face, two forks in his hand. He threw one to the blonde man, who caught it easily, and pulled up his own chair, digging the fork into the centre of the pie. Steam billowed out as he broke the thin crust, and his mouth started watering at the strong smell. He took a small piece, and shovelled it into his mouth, almost groaning as the sweet tangy plums melted onto his tongue. Steve had the same idea, and quickly took a large forkful, blowing on it slightly to cool it down. 

“’S’good.” Bucky mumbled through a mouthful of pastry, and Steve nodded back to him, too engrossed in the pie to reply with actual words. He swallowed his mouthful, and took another, not caring that the centre of the pie was roughly as hot as boiling lava. 

Bucky looked over at Steve, who had his eyes closed, his hand raised in an ‘OK’ sign, obviously enjoying himself. He would never have thought that he would be here, away from HYDRA, laughing with his old friend like they were seventeen again, but as Steve took yet another forkful of pie, straight form the centre, and nearly ended up spitting it out because of the temperature, causing Bucky to let out a guffaw of laughter, he couldn’t help but feel like things would all work out. He had his best friend by his side, and really, what else did he need?


End file.
